The WRATH of JAY-ZUS! hrrrblgrrrrblrrrrrr!

Okay, first of all, I'm gonna need to explain the title of this post. One fine evening when I was a mere highschooler, a few friends and I were hanging out and trying to find something worth watching on TV. We happened upon the Jesus channel, also known as Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN). A man who looked far too much like Richard Nixon was delivering a fire-and-brimstone sermon directly into the camera, interspersed with clips of Tammy Faye Bakker doing the same except with far worse makeup (let's be honest, Tammy Faye is the only person to date who has momentarily scared away my bladder control). At one point, Nixon (I don't know if it was Jim Bakker or some other dude, but we'll call him Nixon) yelled something about the WRATH of JAY-ZUS, and my friends and I all found it really hilarious. That, coupled with a sound-effect of Nixon shaking his Nixon-esque jowls, leads to the above title.

Now, what on earth made me think of such a random memory? Well, because it was AWESOME, first of all. But also because I seem to have found my way into Jesus Camp for the summer. Also known as my apartment. Okay, don't get me wrong. The 3 girls I'm living with are all really sweet, the apartment is really nice, I'm gradually getting settled in. But it's like...TOO sweet. I'm feeling like I have to assert my more masculine (?), nerdy, offbeat traits in order to balance out the tidal waves of estrogen in this place. And then, it turns out that someone owns the Focus on the Family (focus on your own damn family, you crazy bigots) DVD set "the Truth Project." Um, okay, still trying not to judge. Then one of the girls says quite matter-of-factly that non-Christian boys only care about girls' boobs and butts while Christian boys care about girls' faces/hearts/etc.

Sense. Thou makest none.

On the whole, though, the girls are nice and it's shaping up to be a pleasant summer.

If I can wrangle a job.

Okay, uh, I totally forgot what I was trying to write about. I don't know.

Spring semester is over. So is my tenure as an RA. I don't miss school, but...sigh. At least I have my three words to remember. Three words that I (apparently) am:

Strong
Brave
and
Remarkable.

Like a mantra.

How do you make cocks MORE hilarious?

According to my instructor (of a class I seem to blog about a lot), the definition of a rooster is "...uh, I guess it's, like, an older bird."

To which I literally responded, before I could shut myself up, "Wait, WHAT?!"

The mind, it boggles. I mean, I know I'm a trivia collector and I know a lot of silly random useless stuff, but I don't know, I'd sort of expect a dude in his late 20s to know what a rooster is.

I guess this is going to be a bird-themed entry, because I'd like to brag/babble (brabble?) about my latest art project. Birds, you say? Oh yes. Large predatory birds. Carnivorous beasts of the sky. Owls, duh.

As it turns out, French beaded flower techniques are not only useful for making beaded flowers. There's a lot you can do with petal-shaped elements. Such as, I don't know, constructing adorable beaded owls. So I'm working out a pattern. And I'm going to eventually list the little bugger on Etsy (my username is, of course, AsymmetricOwl). Obviously, I'll post photos here once I'm done with it.

I'm pretty thrilled that my orange faceted drop beads are finally coming in handy. Beaks!

Huh. Class has devolved into a series of jokes about a nineteenth-century serial axe murderer named Bushy. I think I can live with this.

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah

Bloggin' during S520 again. What? How else am I going to stay awake?

I'm sitting in a graduate-level class with...a teddy bear. Kate and I went to Build-A-Bear last week and I've been taking my adorable bear most places with me. I didn't intend to bring it to class, because I'm not in 4th grade anymore. But I did bring it to the desk, and to my 1:1, and I went straight from there to dinner and straight from dinner to class. Yeah, I'm walking all around campus clutching a teddy bear. Fuck you, I like cuddly things. My choice to wear my hair in pigtails today does not help matters, of course. Especially since my hair is short enough that my pigtails are all teeny and cute and puffy like frizzy brown pompoms.

Um, we are talking about the plot of "The Office" during class. As awesome as that sounds, I'd like to get on with class...

Speaking of getting on with things. I'm really thinking about getting serious with my Etsy shop. I'd want to sell a few different things...crocheted toys, beaded flowers, jewelry...things people have shown an interest in. And as I take up new crafts--because God knows I always do--I can stick those in my shop too. Eventually it could become a legit job, or at least something like it. This year I've sold (not on Etsy) two bouquets of beaded flowers (totaling $220), a set of crocheted cupcakes ($50), and a couple pairs of earrings ($24). That's almost $300, without even really trying.

Oh good Lord. "So...this study is basically telling us that we're all different...we all have different abilities and aptitudes..."

Uh, well, duh. I mean, I know this isn't the School of Library and Rocket Science or anything, but for fuck's sake, can we at least try?

I definitely should've applied to a School of Library and Rocket Science. I'd have the best class schedule ever:
R501: Combustible Reference
R502: Collection Development and Explosion
R503: Rocket-Propelled Card Catalogs

For the record, I would definitely get an A in R502.

Class is over. Praise the Lord.

Kill kill, bang your mom, gouge gouge. Ta-da

Tonight I was watching MTV because I have bad taste and no life. A music video came on (yes, they still play music videos, but only after 3am) that was this sappy "omgz i heart uuuu" quasi-R&B track that had approximately zero redeeming qualities. I don't even know what it was. The video was astoundingly typical: attractive-ish dude of indeterminate ethnicity trying to keep a beat while professing his love for his boo, who is gazing adoringly at him from the passenger seat of his tricked-out car or boat or I don't even remember. Duh. I literally could not have cared less.

But something struck me about the song and unleashed a feeling that I can only describe as premonitory dread. It was EXACTLY the kind of song that, when the DJ puts it on at your eighth-grade dance, all the awkward pubescent couples sway back and forth and if you don't have a date you hang out on the bleachers and cry because your social life is OVER. There is no other appropriate situation for this song, I promise you.

So the reason I'm writing about it is my internal monologue, which I found hilarious, because I'm self-indulgent like that.

"Oh shit, this song is terrible. I can already tell. It's a prom song. It's the song that everybody and their mother dances to at prom. Awkwardly. I guess maybe not their mother. I mean, if you're dancing with your mother at prom, you have bigger issues than your terrible taste in music. Like, between the two problems, your therapist is going to ask more questions about your dating your mom than he is about your peculiar fondness for intentionally shitty music."

When my train of thought veers off-track, it tends to crash and burn fairly quickly. This time the Thought Express took a flaming nosedive off Incest Cliff. Hey, gotta keep life interesting.

Speaking of interesting. I've been watching this owl thing, right? (See previous post.) There's a chat box next to the video feed, which I read but don't participate in. I love the random shit that comes up, though. According to other people who like to watch baby owls eat rats at 6am, tiny Tyrannosaurus Rex arms...are for throwing gang signs. Because, you know, what the hell else are they good for? So now I have an excellent mental image of T-rex, gangsta style.

This might have to be drawn, of course. Hmm.

My IQ? Schfifty-five.

One thing I'm really good at is starting blogs and then neglecting them.

Another thing I'm really good at is procrastinating and/or getting distracted.

So naturally, this leads to one of my greatest talents: blogging about nothing when I'm really supposed to be catching up on a month of overdue research.

Let me just throw this out there: I don't really give a shit about information seeking literature. Frankly, I think most of it, what I've read anyway, is bullshit and has glaring deficiencies. So I'm understandably less than thrilled about piecing a bunch of it together to describe my thought process when I ask a Best Buy dude about computer specs. Especially because I'm only asking because I need to have an example for this damn paper--I'm entirely capable of doing my own damn research on processor speeds and RAM. The fatal flaw in this entire project is that I don't tend to rely on interpersonal sources for information seeking; I find things out on my own. That's what the internet is for (well, that, and porn).

But I have no choice, and the stupid fucking thing was due in February, so I guess April is a good time to start writing it.

Yeah, my standards have plummeted.

In News of the Awesome, I get to see my darling best friend in just a few days!!! Kate is coming to visit me, which is probably the best thing that will have happened to me since, well, since she was here last. There are some things that I'm always going to need in my life, and Kate tops that list.

Kate's impending visit is actually the reason I'm so hell-bent on finishing my stupid paper. She will be mightily displeased if I'm not caught up on schoolwork by the time she gets here. Plus, I'll be a much happier person if I can enjoy the weekend without panicking about overdue papers.

Also, OWLS!

Moments of Awesome

I've been feeling a little less than thrilled with life lately, so I've decided to compile a list of awesome things I've done over the past 23 years, 2 months, and 11 days.

Won $50 for a bulletin board
Played "abortion" on a triple word score
Spelled "antidisestablishmentarianism" aloud in under 5 seconds...when I was 8
Taught myself (and Laurel) to make French beaded flowers
Amassed a bigger vocabulary than Firefox, apparently, since it doesn't recognize "antidisestablishmentarianism"
Sang in French for an audience and a panel of judges...and got first place
Made a great "that's what she said" joke on Christmas
Named a set of stuffed animals Fall, Down, The, and Stairs
Wrote a book...when I was 15
Pissed off my entire 8th grade class by drawing eyeballs impaled on swords
Enjoyed "Crime and Punishment"
Made a Dante's "Inferno" scrapbook
Played the violin at Magic Kingdom
Went to Vegas for Easter
Spent 4th grade catapulting stuffed animals across the classroom
Sat through every Internet shock video I know of (without vomiting!)
Delivered a calm, calculated smackdown to the mouthbreathers at indystar.com over the "OMGZ THEY TOOKED TEH PRAYER OUTTA MY NOOSPAPER!" kerfuffle
Stood up for gay rights IN CHURCH when I was 14
Taught a PhD student the difference between reliability and validity
Painted a nativity scene on a sugar cookie
Was the only girl ever from my high school to make the Brain Game team (BG team is composed of the best varsity Quiz Bowlers, so...big deal)
Treated a severe burn with Orange Crush (not recommended)
Bought fluorescent pink shoelaces because, fuck, why not?
Busted my own lip while sleeping
Cited 4chan in at least two graduate-level classes
Ordered stuff online and had it addressed to Doomhammer Javelin
Asked my mom how people are made...when I was FOUR
Sang "Baby's First Christmas" to a kitten
Wrote the most disgusting paragraph ever written

Actually, I'm gonna go ahead and write that paragraph here, because it's awesome. Quit reading if you have just eaten, are currently eating, or plan to eat...well, ever again.

As he thrusted his snout into her weeping, crusty anus, the stench overpowered his senses and nearly made his tear ducts curdle. "Quick!" he shouted to the priest. "Fetch me a shovel and a dishcloth!" The command distracted Father Earl from the picking of his pus-filled scabs, and he waddled out of the port-o-john as fast as his little stumps would carry him.

Eh, it could be improved, but I'm gonna call it a success.

Music recommendations, or rather, commandments

"Your Hand in Mine" by Explosions in the Sky. DO IT NOW. I don't care how you listen to it--buy it, pirate it, find it on youtube, I don't give a shit. LISTEN TO IT. All 8+ minutes of it.

While you're at it, go ahead and acquire a copy of "Patients" by, uh...Patients? Radical Face? Ben Cooper? Dude, you confuse me with your five thousand pseudonyms, but you make up for it by knocking me flat with incredible music. Oh, and about my advice to acquire "Patients," good luck with that one. I can has widespread release plz? So I don't feel silly recommending it to everyone?

Oh, and what the hell, how about another one. The entire friggin' Dark Was The Night album, both discs. Pay special attention to the Decemberists, Stuart Murdoch, and Yeasayer.

And speaking of the Decemberists, go ahead and acquire Tarkio's "Omnibus." The first time I listened to it I was like "Holy shit, that guy is seriously trying to sound like Colin Meloy." Yeah, um, about that.

And good Lord, The Lonely Forest's "We Sing The Body Electric!" is worth a listen or two or a thousand. It's an easy contender for my list of favorite whole albums. Others on the list are, of course, "Chutes Too Narrow" by the Shins, "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" by Neutral Milk Hotel (duh), "En Passant" by Jean-Jacques Goldman (what? you think a self-professed indie kid can't love an aging French prog-rocker?)...et cetera.

Isn't it awesome how I'm directly addressing my audience of exactly zero humans? My life is TOTALLY exciting.

Oh, and lest this entry sound totally pretentious (however unintentional), I'm gonna go on record saying that I've definitely been rockin' out to Lady Gaga this week. I'll be honest, I sort of want her bad romance a little bit. What can I say, I appreciate batshit crazy.

Obviously.

Also, I can't read pokerfaces either.